Transcript THE ROARING TWENTIES

Do Now
Take a paper from the front of the room.
Answer question #1
Article reflection
• How is the article you read the other
day connected to the video segment
on the same topic? Use your video
notes, the article, and the big idea
statement. Write a paragraph to be
turned in.
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
LIFE & CULTURE
IN AMERICA IN
THE 1920S
CHANGING WAYS OF LIFE
• During the 1920s,
urbanization
continued to
accelerate
• For the first time,
more Americans lived
in cities than in rural
areas
• New York City was
home to over 5
million people in 1920
• Chicago had nearly
3 million
URBAN VS. RURAL
• Throughout the 1920s,
Cities were impersonal
Farms were innocent
Americans found
themselves caught between
urban and rural cultures
• Urban life was considered
a world of anonymous
crowds, strangers,
moneymakers, and pleasure
seekers
• Rural life was considered
to be safe, with close
personal ties, hard work and
morals
Trends
-*The 1920’s brought on the rise of youth culture.*
-Popular Language - Used to seem unique, urbanization played a
big role.
-Clothing Trends - Also used for uniqueness, to get away from
tradition, to be risqué.
-Dance Marathons - Big way to make quick money, something to
do in spare time.
-Games - Help to kill time, Mahjong, Ouija boards, Crossword
Puzzle.
-Music - Jazz was popular, mainly among youth, blamed for
everything, if you danced to Jazz you were considered morally
loose.
-Flappers - Modern woman of the 1920s, short hair, short skirts,
sleeveless baggy dresses, rolled down hose, powdered knees, lots
of makeup, thought to be morally loose, offended older
generations.
THE FLAPPER
 During the 1920s, a
new ideal emerged
for some women: the
Flapper
 A Flapper was an
emancipated young
woman who
embraced the new
fashions and urban
attitudes
NEW ROLES FOR WOMEN
Early 20th Century teachers
 The fast-changing world of the 1920s
produced new roles for women
 Many women entered the workplace as
nurses, teachers, librarians, & secretaries
 However, women earned less than men and
were kept out of many traditional male jobs
(management) and faced discrimination
THE CHANGING FAMILY
Margaret Sanger and other
founders of the American Birth
Control League - 1921
 American birthrates
declined for several
decades before the
1920s
 During the 1920s that
trend increased as birth
control information
became widely available
 Birth control clinics
opened and the
American Birth Control
League was founded in
1921
MODERN FAMILY
EMERGES
 As the 1920s
unfolded, many features
of the modern family
emerged
 Marriage was based
on romantic love,
women managed the
household and
finances, and children
were not considered
laborers/ wage earners
but rather developing
children who needed
nurturing and education
EDUCATION
• During the 1920s,
developments in education
had a powerful impact on
the nation
• Enrollment in high
schools quadrupled
between 1914 and 1926
• Public schools met the
challenge of educating
millions of immigrants
EXPANDING NEWS
COVERAGE
 As literacy
increased,
newspaper
circulation rose and
mass-circulation
magazines flourished
 By the end of the
1920s, ten American
magazines -including Reader’s
Digest and Time –
boasted circulations
of over 2 million
RADIO COMES
OF AGE
o Although print media
was popular, radio was
the most powerful
communications medium
to emerge in the 1920s.
New radios were obsolete
in 3-6 months.
o News was delivered
faster and to a larger
audience
o Americans could hear
the voice of the president
or listen to the World
Series live
AMERICAN HEROES OF
THE 20s
 In 1929, Americans spent
$4.5 billion on
entertainment (includes
sports)
 People crowded into
baseball games to see their
heroes
 Babe Ruth was a larger
than life American hero
who played for Yankees
 He hit 60 homers in 1927
LINDBERGH’S
FLIGHT
 America’s most
beloved hero of the time
wasn’t an athlete but a
small-town pilot named
Charles Lindbergh
 Lindbergh made the
first nonstop solo transatlantic flight
 He took off from NYC
in the Spirit of St. Louis
and arrived in Paris 33
hours later to a hero’s
welcome
ENTERTAINMENT AND
ARTS
Walt Disney's animated
Steamboat Willie marked the
debut of Mickey Mouse. It was
a seven minute long black and
white cartoon.
 Even before sound,
movies offered a means of
escape through romance
and comedy
 First sound movies: Jazz
Singer (1927)
 First animated with
sound: Steamboat Willie
(1928)
 By 1930 millions of
Americans went to the
movies each week
MUSIC AND ART
 Famed composer
George Gershwin
merged traditional
elements with
American Jazz
 Painters like
Edward Hopper
depicted the
loneliness of
American life
 Georgia O’ Keeffe
captured the
grandeur of New York
using intensely
colored canvases
Gershwin
Radiator Building,
Night, New York , 1927
Georgia O'Keeffe
Hopper’s famous “Nighthawks”
WRITERS OF THE
1920S
 The 1920s was one of
the greatest literary eras in
American history
 Sinclair Lewis, the first
American to win the Nobel
Prize in literature, wrote
the novel, Babbitt
 In Babbitt the main
character ridicules
American conformity and
materialism
WRITERS OF
THE 1920s
 Writer F. Scott
Fitzgerald coined the
phrase “Jazz Age” to
describe the 1920s
 Fitzgerald wrote
Paradise Lost and The
Great Gatsby
 The Great Gatsby
reflected the
emptiness of New York
elite society
WRITERS OF THE
1920S
 Edith Warton’s Age
of Innocence
dramatized the clash
between traditional and
modern values
 Willa Cather
celebrated the simple,
dignified lives of
immigrant farmers in
Nebraska in My Antonia
WRITERS OF THE
1920
Hemingway - 1929
 Ernest Hemingway,
wounded in World War I,
became one of the bestknown authors of the era
 In his novels, The Sun
Also Rises and A Farewell to
Arms, he criticized the
glorification of war
 His simple,
straightforward style of
writing set the literary
standard
THE LOST GENERATION
 Some writers
such as Hemingway
and John Dos
Passos were so
soured by American
culture that they
chose to settle in
Europe
 In Paris they
formed a group that
one writer called,
“The Lost
Generation”
John Dos Passos self – portrait.
He was a good amateur painter.
Great Migration
Migration of the Negro by
Jacob Lawrence
 Between 1910 and
1920, the Great
Migration saw
hundreds of thousands
of African Americans
move north to big cities
 By 1920 over
5 million of the nation’s
12 million blacks (over
40%) lived in cities
HARLEM, NEW YORK
 Harlem, NY became
the largest black urban
community
 Harlem suffered from
overcrowding,
unemployment and
poverty
 However, in the
1920s it was home to a
literary and artistic
revival known as the
Harlem Renaissance
AFRICAN AMERICAN
WRITERS
Mckay
 The Harlem
Renaissance was
primarily a literary
movement
 Led by well-educated
blacks with a new sense
of pride in the AfricanAmerican experience
 Claude McKay’s poems
expressed the pain of life
in the ghetto
LANGSTON
HUGHES
 Missiouri-born
Langston Hughes was
the movement’s best
known poet
 Many of his poems
described the difficult
lives of working-class
blacks
 Some of his poems
were put to music,
especially jazz and blues
ZOLA NEALE
HURSTON
 Zola Neale Hurston
wrote novels, short
stories and poems
 She often wrote
about the lives of poor,
unschooled Southern
blacks
 She focused on the
culture of the people–
their folkways and
values
AFRICANAMERICAN
PERFORMERS
 During the 1920s,
black performers won
large followings
 Paul Robeson, son
of a slave, became a
major dramatic actor
 His performance in
Othello was widely
praised
LOUIS
ARMSTRONG
 Jazz was born in the
early 20th century
 In 1922, a young trumpet
player named Louis
Armstrong joined the
Creole Jazz Band
 Later he joined Fletcher
Henderson’s band in NYC
 Armstrong is considered
the most important and
influential musician in the
history of jazz
EDWARD
KENNEDY “DUKE”
ELLINGTON
 In the late 1920s,
Duke Ellington, a
jazz pianist and
composer, led his
ten-piece orchestra
at the famous
Cotton Club
 Ellington won
renown as one of
America’s greatest
composers
BESSIE
SMITH
 Bessie Smith,
blues singer, was
perhaps the most
outstanding vocalist
of the decade
 She achieved
enormous popularity
and by 1927 she
became the highestpaid black artist in
the world